Desperately seeking Roseville

[byrdhouse]

We have a medical appointment in Roseville in early September. The restaurant pickings look pretty grim. Does anyone know of an interesting place in the vicinity, maybe Rocklin, Citrus Heights, etc.? Any cuisine, just not processed chain-type. And it needn't be fancy. A good Mexican cantina would be fine.

[tanabutler]

I hope someone else can help you, because Roseville was a cultural wasteland when we drove through in May. It's one strip mall after another, and it looked like a nightmare of conformity. I was depressed when we had to stop and eat there.

(Chowhound.com has several posts on Roseville, though.)

[winesonoma]

From an earlier post. "Masque, in El Dorado Hills. Just opened two weeks ago.

It's already the best restaurant in the Sacramento region. Yes, I said it.

It's a 25-minute drive (sans traffic) from central Sac, but it's well worth it. Former executive chef from Valentino.

Great service. Great dining room. Great food. Wine list isn't quite up to speed yet, but hey, three out of four ain't bad.

An absolute winner."

Edited August 17, 2004 by winesonoma (log)

[tanabutler]

Are you looking for lunch or dinner? Are you staying over?

[PamelaF]

There is hope for Roseville. It's a rather large area so it would help to know a bit more precisely where you will be, but here is a starter list:

At the Roseville Galleria mall (on the west side) there is an Il Fornaiofeaturing regional Italian cuisine with specials that change monthly to highlight a particular region (they are seasonally appropriate too, so I would expect that they would be featuring southern Italian at this time of year). There is also a Piattirestaurant on Douglas Boulevard. Both of these restaurants are technically chains, each has about 15-20 locations, but each restaurant shows the infulence of the individual chef. Il Fornaio has the wonderful wood fired oven in every location and turns out great breads and crisp crust pizza.

Another high-end option is Le Provencewhich is located in the extreme north west corner of Roseville and features tradtional French food. This is in a mostly residential area and is supposed to have a beautiful location and extensive grounds.

Also, look for Cascades (contetmporary American), Fat's (an outpost of the famous Sacramento Frank Fat's for stylized Asian cusine) and any number of steakhouse places.

For more casual options, look to the strip malls, you never know what you will find there. Here are some personal favorites:

Jalisco Grill, on Fairway Drive, just a bit north of the Galleria mall in a strip mall, quite a good taqueria, nothing fancy, but well prepared food at reasonable prices.

Just next door is an asian seafood buffet that is also reasonably good. These two places may techically be in Rocklin.

As for Citrus Heights, they have a great farmer's market in the Sunrise mall parking lot on Saturday mornings and we alsways visit Fiesta Taqueria (in the strip mall on the northeast corner of Sunrise and Greenback Lane) for tacos after farmers market shopping. Once again, nothing fancy, but satisfying food at good prices.

Another strip mall on Foothills Blvd at Pleasant Grove (northwest Roseville) features Chaat Cafe for great tandoori meats and snacks, Homai Fusion for sushi, and Great Wraps for gyros and falfel (lots of other wraps too).

Homai is unique for an "all you can eat" place. It's more like a small plates restaurant. You order dishes 3 at a time. Everything is prepared individually (not a buffet). They do limit the amount of premimum sashmi per diner, but you can order as much sushi and other dishes as you want. Last time I was there lunch was 8.95 and dinner was 15.95/person.

Finally, I asked my husband for his recommendations and his number one choice was the Vernon Street Grill, in old downtown Roseville. They feature burgers, Philly style cheesesteaks and a really wide selection of other sandwiches and entrees (and garlic fries!). You will get more food than you can eat, the owner will probably deliver your food to the table, and you will get to see the part of Roseville that was around before they built all the subdivisions and shopping malls.

Hope this is helpful, please post follow-up questions or even PM me if you need more specifics about directions and such.

[byrdhouse]

Are you looking for lunch or dinner? Are you staying over?

We have a morning appointment on a Friday, so breakfast suggestions are welcome.

Regarding dinner, there are a couple of positive postings on Le Provence, and it's close, so that sounds like a worthwhile experiment. (See also this review in the Sacramento Bee.) There are some very negative reviews of it on Chowhound, but they don't give the impression of sophistication.

El Dorado Hills looks to be a 40 minute drive, a bit far for us.